What Hurts the Most
by ithaswhatitisnt
Summary: A rainy day at the Opera reminds Erik of so much...of what he can't have...oneshot.


I was listening to Rascal Flatts' "What Hurts the Most" while writing this. I thought it sounded nice. Listening to the song while reading this is definitely recommended (and geez, I cannot spell). I don't own Phantom nor do I own Rascal Flatts and their incredible music.

* * *

"Oh, Christine!" Erik sobbed as rained pounded against the roof of the Opera Garnier. Erik felt it appropriate that it was pouring outside, mirroring his expression to a T. The heavens were lamenting that the Angel of Music could not have his angel.

Salty tears ran down Erik's dead flesh, and he shut his great glowing amber eye sockets to reminisce. He clutched the few straggly strands of hair that adorned his head and tugged on them unhappily.

"Why?" he screamed through his tears, throwing his arms in the air. He wept bitterly, the tears coming faster and harder as he pictured his little prima donna, Christine. In his mind's eye he saw her singing, giving her heart and soul to please him. The angels wept alongside Erik as Christine's voice went higher and higher, and she gave every fiber of her being. When Christine had finished, wild applause erupted around her. For a second, Christine smiled a triumphant smile, and then she fainted.

Erik remembered how he had felt victorious as he listened to his little angel. He had known then that she had been singing only for him.

"My sweet, sweet Christine!" Erik howled, throwing himself on the bed he had made especially for her, where she had lain once. With a shudder, he stemmed the flow of tears from his eye sockets and snorted through the hole where his nose should have been.

He reclined on the bed quietly, folding his hands behind his head in reflection.

What had gone wrong? That had been the question _du jour_. Erik knew the answer, but still he had to wonder why. He wondered where someone as pure as Christine could find the malice to hurt him so. After all he had done for her…

He had been so close! He had been so close to having a wife he could take out on Sundays. He had been able to taste the sweet enticement that love offered.

Then Christine saw his corpse face. It was all over, all so hopelessly over.

Erik could not bring himself to move. He just wished for death, he just wished that it would all be over, and mercifully quick as well.

Erik closed his eyes tight, and curled into a ball under the thick, cushy velvet blankets, and listened intently. In the back of his mind, he could hear his Christine singing exclusively for him. God, she was so beautiful when she sang. She sang, high and sweet, but soft, and the sound warmed Erik's cold core. In his world, Christine had been the light, and now his world was cold, dark, and evil. His world was lifeless.

"Erik? Erik?"

Erik's sockets popped open, and for a second he shielded his eyes. He was hallucinating, he had to be. A blond goddess sat above him, her hand resting on his chest through the blankets, and she was… Oh God, he hated to even think it, lest it be a mirage. But he couldn't resist…

"Christine? _Mon ange_?" he asked timidly, hopefully. He extended a skeletal hand to touch her face, and with a coquettish smile, she vanished.

"_NO_!" Erik howled with an ear-splitting shriek. He could feel his heart breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, despite his best efforts to keep it whole.

He had put that announcement in the paper to spare her, and he hoped that she could move on, while at the same time praying she wouldn't forget him.

"Raoul, leave me alone!" came a shriek through the crumbling walls. Erik would know this shriek anywhere.

His beloved Christine had returned to him at last! But he would only allow himself to be seen if she desired it. He eavesdropped on Christine and her husband.

"But Christine," said her husband, "I was simply trying to…"

"_Enough_, Raoul!" Christine yelled, and Erik grinned evilly.

Raoul's voice became hard and dead. "Christine, you cannot speak to me like this. It's unacceptable!"

"Erik allowed me to speak to him however I wished," Christine sniffed haughtily. Erik could just picture the little smile playing about her lips, and he choked down the urge to laugh.

" 'Erik' isn't here anymore!" Raoul spat in a poor imitation of his wife. "He doesn't love you anymore, and neither do I!"

Erik listened intently to the silence, hoping to pick up Christine's outraged reaction. He heard a sob, and Christine burst into hysterical tears.

Raoul sounded more panicked now. "Christine, Christine, shhh, it's all right. I didn't mean it. Of course I love you."

Pins found their way into Erik's body, and Erik lay tortured there in his underground realm, listening to the love of his life weep in the arms of someone he despised.

Christine's voice, riddled with tears, came through.

"I wish I could see Erik once more. I wish I could feel him once again."

Erik's heart leapt, and the barrier of ice that held him captive shattered. Erik was jolted from his bed, and he raced up to Christine, so he could fulfill her wish.

"Raoul, you don't know how much I wish I could see him," Christine sighed. Erik was a blur racing to his beloved's arms. As Erik burst into the main hall of the Opera Garnier, still being serenaded by the crash of the rain, Christine snapped her head up to the sudden burst of motion.

Christine pushed Raoul's comforting arms away and ran to Erik as fast as her feet would carry her.

"Erik!" she sang, throwing herself into his arms. She clutched him tight, like she was drowning and he could save her.

"Christine!" he wept, inhaling her floral scent. They fell in a heap on the floor of the Opera Garnier with Raoul staring on incredulously.

"Erik?" Christine whispered huskily. "Take me away from him. I beg you."

Erik's dead flesh took on a healthy glow as he whisked Christine into his arms, stuck out his tongue at a surprised Raoul, and fled with his beloved Christine. She kissed him all over his dead flesh on the way down to his lair.

As Erik dreamed once more of his Christine, he smiled. An exalted smile was on his peaceful face, and his arms were held out in an awkward position. His arms were positioned as though he were caressing someone, and he was stroking the air.

"Christine," he crooned softly in his sleep, and he kissed the air. The poor man slept on, because that was the only way he could be happy. His dreams were all he had left to make sure that the hurt didn't go away, to ensure that it was all real, and at one time, it had been good.

* * *

Poor Erik. He never gets what he wants, does he, the poor sweetie? However, he does want reviews...anyone who reviews will receive an Erik hug!

Erik: (from my closet) I DON'T WANT TO GIVE ANYONE HUGS!

Me: Shush, you, or else I'll make you watch a Justin Beiber concert!

Erik: (panicked) FINE, FINE, hugs for all reviewers!

TTFN!

~ithaswhatitisnt


End file.
